Thomas J. Kennedy Jr., veteran

Thomas J. Kennedy Jr.

Irving H. Phillips, Baltimore Sun

Thomas J. Kennedy Jr., who while fighting with the Marines in the South Pacific during World War II was blinded by enemy fire and after his return to Baltimore established Dawn's Office Supply, died of cancer at his Mount Washington home. He was 86.

Thomas J. Kennedy Jr., who while fighting with the Marines in the South Pacific during World War II was blinded by enemy fire and after his return to Baltimore established Dawn's Office Supply, died of cancer at his Mount Washington home. He was 86. (Irving H. Phillips, Baltimore Sun)

Thomas J. Kennedy Jr., who while fighting with the Marines in the South Pacific during World War II was blinded by enemy fire and after his return to Baltimore established Dawn's Office Supply, died Friday of cancer at his Mount Washington home.

He was 86.

Mr. Kennedy was born and raised on his family's Kingsville farm. Growing up, he developed a lifelong love of horses while helping his father on his horse-drawn milk wagon.

In his youth, he worked as a Western Union messenger boy, exercised racehorses on a Monkton farm and was a Pep Boys stock clerk.

After his parents divorced, his mother raised her five children single-handedly. He later attended Polytechnic Institute for a year, and after turning 16, tried to enlist in the Marine Corps.

"Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a Marine. One day when I was 7 years old, while shopping with my mother, I spied a Marine and ran over to him and asked him a million questions, and told my mother that someday I'd be a Marine too," Mr. Kennedy wrote in a recently discovered letter from the 1940s.

Mr. Kennedy's mother refused to give her permission for her son to join the Marines, so after forging his mother's name, he enlisted at the old Post Office on North Calvert Street.

He was sent to the South Pacific as a member of the 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Division.

After attending Mass on Christmas morning in 1943, the young corporal entered combat at Bougainville in the Solomon Islands and was blinded by enemy fire to his face.

"I was delivered into the depths of darkness by a Japanese 'booby trap' — a hand grenade," he wrote in the letter. "I thought that all life had ended for me because what good was living without my eyes. A short time later, a buddy found me groping around in the dark and helped me back to the beach, where a plane picked me up and took me to Guadalcanal."

"He spent the rest of his life until the day he died picking out pieces of shrapnel from his face," said his brother, Steven G. Kennedy, who also lives in Mount Washington.

While recuperating at a Navy hospital in Northern California, Mr. Kennedy, who had been awarded a Purple Heart, met and fell in love with Bette Lance, a pharmacist's mate from Oneonta, N.Y., who worked there.

Even though she asked the young Marine to attend a hospital dance, Mr. Kennedy was reluctant to fall in love because "I felt a man without sight had no chance with girls," he wrote. "This was a mistake — that dance started a wonderful friendship with Bette."

The couple married on Dec. 29, 1944. Two months before his marriage, he entered and graduated from the Seeing Eye Institute in Morristown, N.J., where he was given Dawn, a German shepherd.

He earned his General Educational Development certificate and studied at Strayer's Business College before going to work as a salesman for Stationers Inc., where he and Dawn called on clients.

"He was subsequently fired by the owner, who told him, 'I love you, Tom, but there are many thousands of items in this business, and you need your eyes to be successful,'" said his brother.

In 1946, with $300 in cash, Mr. Kennedy went into business for himself after purchasing a used trailer for $100 and inventory with the remaining funds.

He named his office supply company after his dog, Dawn, and later mounted replicas of the German shepherd's head on the roofs of his trucks and on his office stationery. Dawn died in 1954.

His first location was an empty lot on Gwynns Falls Parkway, and then he moved to a basement room in the Royalton apartments on the 1900 block of Maryland Ave.

In 1958, he moved the business to its present home at 2418 N. Charles St. Its motto is "Dawn Good Service," and the huge pencil on the side of the building has been a Charles Street landmark for more than 40 years.

Mr. Kennedy took orders over the phone and relied on a talking computer to help him in his work. During lunch hours, employees would read Money magazine, Architectural Digest, trade journals and the Daily Racing Form to him.

"It doesn't bother me at all," Mr. Kennedy said of his blindess in a 1986 Baltimore Sun profile. "I just believe if you want to do something, you can do it. You can't drive a car, of course, but there are a lot of things you can do."

"He was a great man. He was unbelievable and had such a great brain. Nothing was an obstacle for him," said Joan LeFaivre, who went to work for Mr. Kennedy after graduating from high school and is now president of the company.

"He had no light perception and was totally in the dark. He had no fear of anything, and he knew where everything was in the store. He'd go through there so fast that no one knew he was blind," she said.

Ms. LeFaivre said Mr. Kennedy so loved the Marine Corps that he named the store's line of pencils and typewriter ribbons Marine Brand. He also stressed customer service and employee loyalty, with most of them having worked there on average for 27 years.

"In sales meetings, he'd tell his salesman, 'If a customer wants an elephant, you call the zoo and get him one,'" she said with a laugh.

Even though Mr. Kennedy, who had lived in the Dixon Hill neighborhood of Mount Washington for years, had been ill for the last decade, he continued to work and had not officially retired.

Mr. Kennedy enjoyed horseback riding, a sport that he shared with his wife. He also learned to bowl and fence.

He played cards, in Braille, with Colts football greats such as Johnny Unitas and Bobby Boyd, who met weekly on Friday nights at his Mount Washington home.

Mr. Kennedy was also a successful breeder and racer of thoroughbreds, some of which were stake winners. In 1979, his horse, For Love and Glory, won a $115,000 purse.

He was a member of the Hibernian Society.

Mr. Kennedy was a communicant of St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church, 1008 W. 37th St., where a Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

In addition to his wife and brother, he is survived by two sons, Thomas J. Kennedy III of Norfolk, Va., and Kim Michael Kennedy of Baltimore; two sisters, Margaret K. Melber of Parkville and Helen Geslois of Ocean City; and two grandchildren.